ANECDOTES AND REMINISCENCES OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN AND WOMEN. A I. FRENCH student of medicine lodged in the same house in London with a man in a fever. This poor man was continually teased by the nurse to drink, though he nauseated the insipid liquids that were presented to him. At last, when she was more importunate than usual, he whispered in her ear-" For God's sake bring me a salt herring, and I will drink as much as you please." The woman indulged him in his request; he devoured the herring, drank plentifully, underwent a copious perspiration, and recovered. The French student inserted this aphorism in his journal : "A salt herring cures an Englishman in a fever.” On his return to France, he prescribed the same remedy to the first patient in a fever to whom he was called. A The patient died; on which the student inserted in his journal the following caveat: "N.B.-Though a salt herring cures an Englishman, it kills a Frenchman." 2. A FRENCH soldier, who lay covered with wounds on the field of Dettingen, demanded, a little before he expired, of an English officer, how the battle was likely to terminate; and being answered, that the English had obtained a great victory, "Mon pauvre roi," said the dying man, "que fera-t-il !" 3. OME one was telling an inhabitant of Chamouny he thought his country people very happy in being quite free from such an odious disease (the goitre) which afflicted their poor neighbours the Valaisans. "En revanche," said the peasant, "nous sommes accablés des impôts, et dans le pays de Valais on ne paye rien." 4. VOLTAIRE'S dislike to the clergy is well known. The conversation happening to turn upon that body, one person present observed, "If you subtract pride from priests, nothing will remain." "Vous comptez donc, Monsieur, la gourmandise pour rien," said Voltaire. 5. THE Emperor Joseph of Germany being asked, during the American war, which side he favoured, replied very ingenuously, "Je suis par metier royaliste." I 6. READ the life of Chatterton with much interest and pleasure on its first appearance; for it is an eloquent, spirited, and valuable memoir of the most extraordinary genius which perhaps ever existed. This ill-starred youth certainly found ancient and curious manuscripts, which furnished the hint of his design, and upon which he poured the splendours of his rich imagination, kindling and flowering as he proceeded. We find, from Mason's edition of his friend's letters, how dear the Ossian was to Gray. Though Chatterton could not attain its beauty when he attempted to write in that style, yet that he felt its high claims, is by that attempt demonstrated. We always admire before we imitate. I am an enthusiast in the writings of Chatterton; yet, if I was reduced to the choice of no more looking at a line of them, or of eternal abstinence from the pages of Ossian, I would of the two resign the former. Long before the fame of this miraculous creature had gone abroad, the verses which appeared with his name in the magazines, and with a brief account of the obscurity of his birth, and his entire depriva tion of literary instruction, had inspired my youthful mind with conviction of the magnitude of his genius, so finely, of late years, eulogised by Mr Coleridge in the following lines: "Britannia's boast, the wond'rous boy, Soon after the volume of Chatterton's poems appeared, I spoke of its author to Johnson with the warmest tribute of my admiration; but he would not hear me on the subject, exclaiming, "Pho, child! don't talk to me of the powers of a vulgar uneducated stripling. He may be another Stephen Duck. It may be extraordinary to do such things as he did, with means so slender; but what did Stephen Duck do, what could Chatterton do, which, abstracted from the recollection of his situation, can be worth the attention of learning and taste? Neither of them had opportunities of enlarging their stock of ideas. No man can coin guineas, but in proportion as he has gold." Though Chatterton had been long dead when Johnson began his "Lives of the English Poets;" though this stupendous miscellany had then been some time before the world; though its contents had engaged half the literati of the nation in controversy, yet would not Johnson allow Chatterton a place in those volumes in which Pomfret and Yalden were admitted. So invincible were his grudging and surly prejudices — enduring longdeceased genius but ill-and contemporary genius not at all.-Seward. MY 7. Y father used to say, that he could not comprehend the causes of three things-of the interval of an ague, of the motion of the sea, and of the nature of his own memory. When a person said to him, jocosely, "What! does not so learned a man as you are know what becomes of a fever during its fit of intermission ?" "Are you not a cunning fellow yourself,” replied Scaliger, "to put a question so completely unanswerable ?"-Scaligeriana. 8. THE has lately painted of Mr William Windham, of Norfolk, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are so like the original, that they seem almost alive and ready to speak to you. Painting, in point of resemblance, can go no further.—Maloniana. 9. THE origin of venison being sold by fishmongers was this:-Many noblemen, having more bucks than they had occasion for, wished to dispose of them, but were ashamed to take money. They therefore sent them to their fishmongers, and received fish in return. |